DAP has called on the government to include elected representatives as part of its strategy to control potential Covid-19 outbreaks at their respective constituencies.
Its assistant political education director Ong Kian Ming (above) emphasised there must be room for elected representatives to play a more proactive role in helping to identify potential hotspots or even contain such outbreaks.
"For now, elected representatives don't really get information whenever there's a Covid-19 cluster announced by the National Security Council. We can only guess where they are.
"If we know the specific location, we would be able to send our staff there and be the eyes and ears of the Health Ministry.
"We would know if these places continue to be at risk," he said at a virtual press conference today.
Lawmakers should also be allowed to attend weekly briefings at the district office level to report the latest measures taken to fight Covid-19, he added.
The Bangi MP revealed a DAP report on the party's position on Covid-19, which Ong jointly drafted with other leaders.
The report suggested for the government to provide funding to all parliamentarians, including those from the opposition to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic, including paying for Covid-19 tests in certain areas and providing food aid in locations under enhanced lockdowns.
DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, who also spoke at the press conference, said the report was drafted as Putrajaya failed to rein in the pandemic.
"We would like to put forth our policy position paper on 'Gearing Malaysia Towards Living With Covid-19' to take the country forward.
"It is now clear that any attempts to eradicate the virus altogether from the country will be an act of futility.
"The virus is expected to coexist within the community in the long haul, especially with the existence and increasing dominance of mutating Covid-19 variants," he said.
Lim added that the 'new normal' is not about living in perpetual or modified lockdowns.
"DAP proposes a comprehensive strategy for pandemic mitigation to enable living with Covid-19," he said.
He said DAP communicated the key thrust of its report to finance minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz when they met last week.
Damansara MP Tony Pua said the government must change its mindset by adopting approaches that help people live with Covid-19 instead of attempting to eliminate the pandemic entirely.
"What we want to do is to reduce the negative impact of Covid-19, such as the number of people admitted to the intensive care units and the death toll. The focus is zero ICU and zero death," he said.
To do that, the DAP publicity secretary said the government should continue to increase the capacity of health facilities.
"We need to do more mass testing. The health ministry director-general insisted on targeted testing but we want to emphasise that targeted testing is not limited testing.
"As the number of new infections increase, targeted testing must increase proportionately. That's what they haven't done, they have limited testing instead," he said.
"We also urge the government to reopen social and economic activities gradually and safely, not recklessly. We don't want to take the UK's position where we open up everything," he said.
He, however, noted that what was stated by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was in line with what was demanded by the opposition.
"We need to always look at the basic concept of ensuring a risk-based assessment in opening the economic and social sector," added Pua.
The 21-page DAP position paper disagreed with the government's move to impose a blanket lockdown. It suggested the government use past data to identify potential hotspots in the future.
"Loosen the restrictions on Malaysians to travel abroad especially for fully vaccinated residents to travel to low-risk countries with a low number of cases such as Singapore and Australia," read the paper.
DAP said dining in for two should be allowed in the Klang Valley for those who are fully vaccinated once the percentage of adults who are fully vaccinated crosses the 50 percent mark which should take place sometime in early August.
"Those who are fully vaccinated in states which have crossed the 50 percent mark should be allowed to travel to other states," the paper read.
On July 23, Muhyiddin said 46.7 percent of the country's adult population have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and 21.8 percent have received both doses.
As of noon today, Malaysia reported 17,045 new Covid-19 cases, a third consecutive day of record highs. - Mkini
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